Back in the 1990s, race-obsessed nutballs at Oberlin College in Ohio cooked up a horrid hate crime hoax. Asian-American students claimed that a phantom racist had spray-painted anti-Asian racial epithets on a campus landmark rock. Turned out that it was a warped Asian-American student who perpetrated the dirty deed. Whoops. Never mind.

Student newspapers were filled with complaints about imaginary racism. One Asian-American student accused a library worker of racism after the poor staffer asked the grievance-mongering student to lower the blinds where she was studying. A black student accused an ice cream shop owner of racism after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table because she hadn’t purchased any items from his store.

When conservative alumna Michelle Malkin, OC ’92, returned Wednesday to deliver her lecture “ Exposing Liberals Unhinged” to an overflowing crowd in West Lecture Hall, C-SPAN and Safety and Security stood by and pamphlets on civil discourse were handed out.

Delivering the first lecture in the Ronald Reagan Political Lectureship Series, Malkin spoke about how “liberals see racism where it doesn’t exist, fabricate it when they can’t find it, and ignore it within their own ranks.”

The lecture series is sponsored by Steven Shapiro, OC ’83. The Alumni Association and the Young America Foundation, a group that promotes conservative causes on college campuses, also contributedfunding to this particular event. The Oberlin College Republicans were also responsible for bringing the speaker to campus.

College senior Barry Garrett, president of the OC Republicans, introduced the syndicated columnist, blogger, Fox News contributor and former Competitive Institute Fellow as the obvious choice to start off what he described as a “sorely needed series” that would seek to “shatter political homogeneity.”

Malkin, who is perhaps best known for defending Japanese internment in WWII, drew her lecture from the chapter entitled “One Sick Gook” in her new book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Malkin took the chapter name from hate mail she receives, and she said that the chapter “exposes the dirty little secret of liberal bigotry.”

Reading from her notes, bodyguard standing in front of her, Malkin recounted tales of Oberlin students seeing racism in situations that to her were not racist at all.

So, as soon as I read the fresh reports this week about a purported racist in a “KKK” hood lurking on Oberlin’s campus and reports of bigoted graffiti/vandalism, the fake hate crime alarm bells went off.

And so it goes. The “KKK” hood appears to have been a student in a blanket and it is not clear if the “hate speech” was of malicious intent or meant to be a purposely provocative exercise of free speech by sympathetic students:

According to college newspaper The Oberlin Review, the vandalism began on 9 February, with the defacing of Black History Month and Year of the Queer posters.

This was followed three days later with a note found in the Multicultural Resource Center that read “Nigger + Faggot Center”. A “Whites Only” notice was written above a water fountain and a swastika was drawn on a window, the college newspaper also reported.

The final straw for college staff came with Monday’s reported sighting of a suspect in KKK robes.

A joint statement from faculty including college president Marvin Krislov and dean of students Eric Estes said it involved “a person wearing a hood and robe resembling a KKK outfit” and that police were investigating.

The statement read: “This event, in addition to the series of other hate-related incidents on campus, has precipitated our decision to suspend formal classes and non-essential activities for today.”

Instead, students and staff were encouraged to “gather for a series of discussions of the challenging issues that have faced our community in recent weeks”.

Lt Mike McCloskey of Oberlin police told the Guardian on Monday that officers were still following up the KKK sighting, but suggested that the only witness may have been mistaken.

“Officers checked the area and were unable to locate anybody. College security later saw a student wrapped in a blanket.”

McCloskey suggested that the apparent missighting may have been an innocent mistake. He also indicated that those responsible for the racist vandalism had now been caught and were being dealt with.

“My understanding is that the individuals are college students and they have been identified. They are no longer on campus. The college is dealing with it internally, and we have been working in co-operation with the college.”

He added: “Charges could be happening, depending on prosecutors’ review. Our case file has been forwarded to prosecutors.”

Two students are thought to be behind the vandalism, but it is unclear if they were motivated by racial hatred, or – as has been suggested – were attempting a commentary on free speech.

Nothing has changed. The self-victimization/manufactured racism impulse at Oberlin — and at so many higher mis-education institutions across the country — is as strong and poisonous as ever.